[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 26 (Thursday, March 9, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1385-S1386]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      HONORING SISTER AGNES CLARE

 Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, in my hometown of Springfield, IL, 
we have extraordinary people who have made noteworthy contributions in 
service to others.
  Julie Cellini, a freelance writer and community activist, has written 
many profiles which highlight the lives of these fine neighbors in our 
state capital.
  Recently, Julie shared the life story of such a person: Sister Agnes 
Clare, O.P.
  At 103 years of age with a sharp mind, an enduring will to savor each 
day of her life and an irresistible Irish charm, Sister Agnes Clare is 
more than a living legend. She is an eyewitness to a century of history 
in Springfield; a young observer of Washington, D.C., as the daughter 
of a U.S. Congressman; and most of all, a vivid illustration of the 
legacy of a life of giving as a member of the Dominican Sisters of 
Springfield.
  In this week before the celebration of St. Patrick's birthday, I 
would like to share with the Senate Julie Cellini's recent feature 
story on Sister Agnes Clare from the Springfield State Journal-
Register. As you read it, you will learn of the Grahams, a great Irish-
American family, and a woman who has touched so many lives with so much 
goodness.
  Mr. President, I ask that this article be printed in the 
Congressional Record.

            [From the State Journal-Register, March 5, 2000]

                Golden Opportunities--Sister Agnes Clare

                           (By Julie Cellini)

       Agnes Graham was 11 years old when the race riot of 1908 
     broke out in Springfield.
       ``I remember the smashed dishes and glass from the windows 
     of Loper's Restaurant strewn across South Fifth Street,'' she 
     says. ``My mother tried to keep me from reading the 
     newspapers so I wouldn't know all that happened. She always 
     thought children should be trouble free, but it wasn't 
     possible to avoid what was going on.''
       Now at 103 years old, Agnes Graham has been Sister Agnes 
     Clare O.P. of the Cominican Sisters of Springfield for 80 
     years. She has lived during three centuries of Springfield 
     history, but her voice still carries a hint of the same 
     incredulousness she might have felt some 92 years ago when 
     she watched her hometown erupt into violence that culminated 
     in the lynching of two black men.
       ``There was a mob. They became very angry when they 
     couldn't get to the black prisoners in the county jail. They 
     said a black man raped a white woman, but it wasn't true. The 
     town was just torn apart.''
       By the time the two-day upheaval ended, seven people, 
     blacks and whites, were dead,

[[Page S1386]]

     and 40 black homes and 15 black-owned businesses were 
     destroyed.
       Whether the race riot is her worst memory from more than a 
     century of living, Sister Agnes Clare won't say. Her voice is 
     steady, but she moves quickly to other events, often telling 
     stories about her childhood in the leafy confines of what 
     once was called ``Aristocracy Hill.''
       Born in 1987 in a handsome, Lincoln-era house that sill 
     stands at 413 S. Seventh St., Agnes Graham was the youngest 
     of seven children--three girls and four boys. She grew up in 
     an adoring, achieving family headed by James M. Graham, an 
     Irish immigrant who co-founded the family law firm of Graham 
     & Graham. James M. Graham served in the Illinois General 
     Assembly and as Sangamon County state's attorney before being 
     elected to Congress, where he served from 1908 to 1914.
       Sister Agnes Clare's earliest memories are of life in the 
     Victorian-style, painted-brick house, where water came from a 
     backyard pump and transportation meant hitching up a horse 
     and buggy. She frames them from the perspective of a much 
     loved child who appears to have been the favorite of her 
     older siblings.
       She recalls the Christmas she was 5 years old (``about the 
     age when I started doubting Santa Clause'') and too sick with 
     the flu to walk downstairs to open gifts. Her brother Hugh, a 
     law student at the University of Illinois, wrapped her in a 
     blanket and carried her in his arms down the long, curved 
     staircase with its polished walnut banister.
       ``My father had given me a big dollar bill to buy eight 
     presents, she says, ``I spent 30 cents for three bottles of 
     perfume for my mother and sisters, and the place smelled to 
     high heaven. I bought my father two bow ties for 10 cents. I 
     think they were made of paper, and they fastened with safety 
     pins. When I got downstairs, I saw a cup of tea for Santa 
     Claus.
       ``When I was very young, my father went on a ship to 
     Ireland to visit. I asked him to bring me back a leprechaun, 
     but he said he didn't want me to be disappointed if the 
     leprechauns were too fast for him to catch. What he did bring 
     back was a leprechaun doll in a box, with gray socks and a 
     pipe and bat. He told me it was a dead leprechaun, and that 
     the salt water had killed him. I think I half-believed him, 
     and I went around the neighborhood showing my dead leprechaun 
     to my friends. One of their mother told my mother, `Agnes' 
     imagination is growing up faster than she is.''
       ``The leprechaun went back into a box,'' she says, ``but 
     he'd get to come out on my birthdays and special occasions.''
       Now a family heirloom, the doll resides with her great-
     niece, Sallie Graham.
       Sister Agnes Clare says he Springfield she grew up in 
     wasn't a small town. There were 50,000 people living here at 
     the beginning of the 20th century. Downtown was populated 
     with family-owned businesses, and people tended to stay at 
     the same job all of their lives.
       The streets were paved with bricks that popped up without 
     warning. People waited all year for the biggest event on the 
     calendar: the Illinois State Fair.
       ``My mother baked hams and fried chickens so we had safe 
     food to take to the fair. Lots of people got sick from eating 
     at the fairgrounds because there was no refrigeration. At 
     night, the area around the Old Capitol would be filled with 
     fair performers who put on shows. Acrobats, singers and 
     actors would perform on one side of the square. Then we would 
     rush to the other side to get a front row seat on the ground. 
     Everyone in town seemed to come out, and all the stores 
     stayed open late so people could ship.''
       A rare treat was a little cash for ice cream, usually 
     provided by big brother Hugh because there was an ice cream 
     shop across from the Graham law office.
       A change meeting with Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis 
     was a highlight of the years Sister Agnes Clare spent in 
     Washington as the young daughter of an Illinois congressman. 
     She tells how Brandeis and her father worked together to 
     investigate and remove corrupt agents who were swindling the 
     residents of Indian reservations.
       ``Justice Brandeis came to our home because he was leaving 
     Washington and he wanted to tell my father goodbye. I 
     happened to be hanging on the fence in the front yard, so he 
     gave me his business card and told me to give it to my 
     father. He said my father was a great man.''
       ``Indians would show up at my father's office in full 
     native dress. My father spent a lot of time away from 
     Washington inspecting the reservations. He told me stories of 
     Indians so badly cared for (that) their feet left bloody 
     footprints in the snow. One agent my father got removed gave 
     an Indian a broken sewing machine for land that had oil and 
     timber on it. The Indians were so grateful, a tribe in South 
     Dakota made my father an honorary member with the title Chief 
     Stand Up Straight.''
       Years later, when the Graham family home in Springfield was 
     sold, she says, relatives donated her father's papers from 
     that period to Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.
       In adulthood, Sister Agnes Clare attended college and was a 
     librarian and a founding teacher at a mission and school in 
     Duluth, Minn. However, her long lifetime often has been 
     attached to a small geographic area bounded by the 
     neighborhood where she was born and extending a few blocks 
     west to the places where she attended school, spent much of 
     her working career and retired to the Sacred Heart Convent in 
     1983.
       Within those confines, she has lived most of a full, rich 
     life that shows few signs of diminishing.
       ``Sister Agnes' bones don't support her, so she moves 
     around in a wheel chair,'' says Sister Beth Murphy, 
     communication coordinator for the Springfield Dominican 
     order.
       ``Other than that, she has no illnesses, and her mind is 
     sharp and clear.''
       The order has had other nuns who lived to be 100, but 
     Sister Agnes Clare holds the longevity record.
       ``She's amazing,'' says Sister Murphy. ``She continues to 
     live every day with interest and curiosity. She listens to 
     classical music and follows politics and current events on 
     public radio. She reads the large-print edition of The New 
     York Times every day. Recently I dropped by her room to visit 
     and couldn't find her. She had wheeled herself off to art 
     appreciation class.''
       Sister Agnes Clare's gaze is steady and assured and her 
     face is remarkably unlined. She occupies a sunny room filled 
     with photos and religious keepsakes. Less than a block away 
     is the former Sacred Heart Academy (now Sacred Heart-Griffin 
     High School), where she worked as a librarian for nearly 60 
     years.
       ``No, I didn't plan on becoming a nun,'' she says matter-
     of-factly. ``I always thought I'd have a lot of children and 
     live in a fairy-tale house. No one lives that way, of course.
       ``I always loved books, so when I graduated I went across 
     the street from my family's home and got a job at Lincoln 
     Library. The librarians were patient and put up with me while 
     I learned how to do the work. One day I was alone when a man 
     with a gruff voice and a face that looked like leather came 
     in and asked to see the books written by Jack London. Of 
     course, we had `Sea Wolf' and `Call of the Wild' and all the 
     popular London books. I showed him, and then I asked who he 
     was.
       ``He said he was Jack London. I was so astonished, I forgot 
     to ask for his autograph.''
       Sister Agnes Clare brushes aside any suggestion that she 
     was a writer, despite her essays published in Catholic Digest 
     and other publications. She once sold an article to The 
     Atlantic Monthly. The piece was a rebuttal to one written by 
     a nun critical of convent life. The editors asked for more of 
     Sister Agnes Clare's work but World War II intervened and 
     life became too busy for writing articles.
       She has been a prolific letter writer to four generations 
     of Grahams. Carolyn Graham, another grand-niece says each of 
     her four adult children treasures letters from their Aunt 
     Agnes.
       ``Whenever my kids come home,'' she says, ``they always 
     check in with her. They think she's extraordinary and she 
     is.''
       After a lifetime that has seen wars and sweeping societal 
     changes and the invention of everything from airplanes to the 
     Internet, Sister Agnes Clare isn't offering any advice on how 
     to live longer than 100 years.
       An academically engaged life with good health habits 
     probably has helped, and so has genetics. She comes from a 
     long-lived family. Her father lived to age 93 and her brother 
     Huge died at 95. A nephew, Dr. James Graham, continues to 
     practice medicine at age 91.
       There are, she admits, perks attached to being among the 
     rare triple-digit individuals called centenarians.
       ``People ask you questions when you get to be my age,'' she 
     says, smiling. ``They even listen to my answers.''

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